Note the dates for these two stories are a year apart, but use the same photo.

click for a full sized image

It seems that not only is the photography recycled, so is the storyline. It seems to happen every year, about this time. Note the photos show shear failure and cracks, not melted ice. Shear failure is mostly mechanical-stress related, though ice does tend to be more brittle at colder temperatures.

National Geographic reported this story headline last year, March 25th 2008

“NSIDC Lead Scientist Ted Scambos, who first spotted the disintegration in March, said, “We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years. But warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing a break-up.”

The closest station to the Wilkins Ice Shelf in the NOAA Global Historical Climate Network database is Rothera Point. The following figure shows the historical data for Rothera Point, with monthly temperatures in blue and the annual January temperature in red. Summer (Dec – Mar) temperatures have not increased – the 2000s January temperatures are similar to the 1940s (the oldest data available). So why does NSIDC’s Scambos blame it on air temperatures?

Excellent post, very disturbing that this type of subterfuge is appearing so frequently.
In my own line of work (Landslide/rock fall risk assessment) I find using historical photos incredibly useful in establishing process rates that help to predict failure frequency and then the need for remediation measures, monitoring, or do nothing etc. The tale from the historical series above, even on the short time scale indicates that there is nothing to worry about here!

What I find fascinating is the area to the southeast (?) in the satellite imagery, the section of the shelf that stretches between Latady Is. (the longish one in the center of the above photographs) and Alexander Is. (the land in the bottom right corner). Compare February 1994 to February 2009. It appears virtually unchanged over 15 years.

MarchH says, ” there is nothing to worry about here!”.
Sorry sir, I for one do not agree with you, because that´s just what there are. This story is not just about ice breaking up, but also, and actuallly more, about officials, representing public institutions, trying to quite deliberately to mislead the populace into believing something which is completely false and looks fabricated too indeed.
On top of that they are doing it knowing very well that they are at great risk getting caught “in the act” on the internet on sites like Wuwt. This points to a
frightening indifference and arrogance towards thruth and respect for people in general. That´s frightening!

The Wilkins Iceshelf is on the west side of an island, which is on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula. A location that will be particularly affected by ocean and ocean current changes. And by changes in the westerly winds that blow with hurricane force most of the year.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ant-pen_map.png
By citing the Wilkins Iceshelf as evidence of AGW, they are highlighting the weakness of their case. Interestingly the media seems to be catching on.
From the Australia article,Dr Allison said there was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. “The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west,” he said. And he cautioned that calvings of the magnitude seen recently in west Antarctica might not be unusual.
“Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off – I’m talking 100km or 200km long – every 10 or 20 or 50 years.”
A point I have made repeatedly. Icesheets will break up irrespective of whether the climate is warming or cooling. This is because glaciers transport ice from where it doesn’t melt to where it does melt. This is true even in the depths of an ice age.
Only longer term (100 years or more) data will tell us whether the trend of breakup is increasing, but we don’t have that data.

Why do these supposed scientists find it so hard to grasp the concept that the Arctic and Antarctic have been losing and recreating most of their sea ice each and every year for far longer than any of us have been alive. Mostly due to ocean currents, tides, and gyres breaking it up and flushing it to warmer waters, since polar atmospheres seldom get warm enough to materially affect the cycle. Your previous post on the rebound of Antarctic ice clearly shows that the melt cycle is over, so the chance of the broken Wilkins Shelf drifting away before it once again refreezes is slim.
As an aside, is CT still using data from that faulty satellite? I looked at their 30 day Antarctic animation and it seems to have some suspiciously jumpy areas of open water.

In the Oct 2003 picture you can clearly see the edge of the icesheet running from the upper island down along the northern end of the lower island. In the Feb 2009 picture there has been break up at the northwestern edge, but none further south and east.
In the January 1996 picture there is large scale break up of the ice sheet at its northern edge, at least 50 kilometers in depth. None of the later pictures show additional break up in the north.
From these pictures it’s clear most break up (around 90%) occured pre-1996.
One could conclude that in recent years we have seen a dramatic reduction in ice break up on the Wilkins Iceshelf. But a couple of decades is far too short a timeframe to establish a break up trend in these very large Antarctic glacier/icesheets.

I’m intrigued by the words chosen to describe what appear to me to be somewhat infrequent but naturally recurring events. In Antarctica the word of choice is “collapse” and in the Arctic it is “ice free.”
I’m not real sure what either term means. Take “collapse.” So a piece of floating ice cracks and floats around for awhile and may or may not slip away eventually from Antarctica but seems just or more likely to stay in place, re-attach, and break away again. Yet each time it “collapses” it is a catastrophic event. Yet the total ice mass there seems to be growing if the photos of ice and snow buried weather stations and industrial size cranes are to be believed. These collapses seem no more a catastrophe than broken ice flushing out of the Arctic Ocean in whole (“ice free”) or in part (subs can surface at the NP and ice breakers can navigate around big ice or through thin ice). This is a game of words. There is no problem.
Nice work on this – the one photo – two years – same story is hilarious.

It breaks up, then it reforms, then it breaks up, then it reforms, then it breaks up, etc, etc. Sounds like a cyclical motion to me! As a structural engineer I see this frequently in old buildings & houses, summer time the cracks open up as the moisture content of a soil reduces & the strucutre settles, & they seal themselves up again in the winter when the subsoil moisture content replenishes & the ground heaves the strucutre back up again. If it happens in building structures through natural variations in local conditions, it can happen in natural structures such as ice sheets without the need for calamity. Talking of cracks BTW, not sure if I saw correctly but it looked like lots of shallow radial & parallel crack marks in the top right of one of the reforming photos? Reminds me of the tide going out & then coming in again.
Why do people, & especially those who probably should know better, jump to conclusions based upon one piece of evidence, yet ignore another completely? Why does an observation that one has not noticed previously, quite possibly because such an observation was impossible, decide arbitrarily to conclude an impending disaster is around the corner, without considering the possibility that “perhaps I have only just noticed this event, perhaps it has been happening all the time & I didn’t know it until now!” Mr Scambos should try consultnig the Three Witches next time his conclusions would be just as valid.
As to comments regarding publicly employed officials deliberately or naively misleading the public by their pronouncements, it is indeed an extremely serious issue of trust, honour, & integrity in my book! I know it happens all over the world at all levels of officialdom, but on a small scale. It’s human nature, but wrong when paid by the taxpayer as a public servant. I can understand whistleblowing in the name of democracy, public interest, & hypocracy scandals (one for the politicians), but not misleading people serving a political cause however noble the sentiment!

What a coincidence! I just finished a post on the Southern Ocean SST anomalies, ERSST.v3b version.http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/04/closer-look-at-ersstv3b-southern-ocean.html
The last graph covers the grid of 80S-65S, 80W-60W, which surrounds the Wilkins Ice Shelf.http://i44.tinypic.com/a331xv.jpg
SST anomalies there have been dropping since the 1990s. The trend of the data since 1854 is negative. And the SST anomalies were higher in the 1880s than they were the 1990s.
That post, Figure 5, also shows that ~80% of the Southern Ocean had a long slow decrease and increase in SST anomalies. Is that a cycle with a frequency of about 100 years or simply a dip and rebound?

CT is definitely a AGW site just look at the article they posted in reply to Will’s article in the Daily Tech (its still there despite recent global ice being totally unchanged and recently SH climbing way above anomaly + NH also about to reach “normal” proving Will’s article 100% correct).http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/global.sea.ice.area.pdf
On the other hand, they have NOT manipulated the data (re global ice), so they have maintained some sense of dignity. Beware of “software glitches” to bring the ice down though…. as shown by previously LOLhttp://mikelm.blogspot.com/2007/09/left-image-was-downloaded-from.html
I would nor read ANYTHING into these ice changes (up or down) in the context of “climate”

Re: Wilkins Ice Sheet
The following is an extract from a post on the John Daly site (dated Feb 3 2000). The post was submitted by Chick Keller who, in 2006, was described (by Roger Pielke) as a “a retired Los Alamos lab climate modeler”.Antarctica — Ice shelf breakup. After 400 years of relative stability, nearly 1,150 square miles of the Larson B and Wilkins ice shelves collapsed between March 1998 and March 1999.
Anyone got anything earlier than March 1999 for the Wilkins collapse? If not I claim the prize!

SST anomalies there have been dropping since the 1990s. The trend of the data since 1854 is negative. And the SST anomalies were higher in the 1880s than they were the 1990s.
Bob Tisdale, had you asked me the cause of the Wilkins Icesheet break up, I would have answered the warming since the LIA.
Now, having seen your graphs, I’m not so sure.
My alternate explanation would be increased wind stresses on the ice. Winds in this area below almost continously at hurricane force. Wind blowing over large areas of ice create huge forces.
Then there is a recently (5 years ago) discovered warm ocean current that flows along and in all likelyhood under the Wilkins Icesheet.
The link below says the warm current results from freshwater runoff further north on the Peninsula. Which suggests it varies as a result of local weather conditions.http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=19026
The Wilkins Icesheet is the large blue area in the lower part of the map.

Some years ago there was a position paper on the BAS website about warming in the area of the Antarctic Peninsula. It noted that there was significant warming there – 3% is my recollection – but this did not fit any of the models so was believed to be due to other factors: that, for example the Peninsula was at the junction of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
This paper is no longer on the BAS site. Does anyone know what has happened to it? Is it now believed that the greater than expected warming on the Peninsula is now reconcilable with AGW?

Do we know the names of every person at NSIDC and any other politicized agencies who might have sent out similar well-timed, recurring, alarmist screeds to compliant reporters? With a list of these names, a couple of weeks, and google news, I have a feeling that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Mike Bryant

NO amount of logic, no amount of reason, no amount of fact is going to keep government from it’s chosen course. Tax increases and rationing energy. It has been ordained.
Pay more in taxes to the government, so government scientists can pretend to control the weather. Exposing their methods is just going to make them angry.
Real science should shun the whole affair, for it is they who are being taken done with the hoax.

Sometimes the answer is the the most obvious. If one looks at cryoshpere web page and antartica you will see at this time of year all of the continent protected by sea ice except the side of the penninsula where this Wilkens ice shelf is. It seems obvious that ocean exposure ( ice erosion) has alot to do with this side of the penninsula breaking up. notice on the other side of the pennisula the coast line is nice and smooth and no breaking up reported compared to jagged edge coastline on the wilkens sidehttp://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/antarctic.seaice.color.000.png

This is the email I just sent to the NSICD about their recent Wilkins Ice Sheet press release:
Dear NSIDC:
Please inform Dr Ted Scambos that he needs a memory check, since it is obvious from photos dating back as far as 1996 that the Wilkins Ice Sheet breaks up every SH summer (Jan-Mar) and reforms during every SH winter (Jul-Sept). Dr Scambos was recently quoted as saying:
From the Nat Geo story: [It’s] an event we dont get to see very often, Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, said in a press statement.
SInce this is an annual event, and one year in galactic time is minute, it is a very frequent event and does not deserve the hysterical hype given to it each year by Dr Scambos and the NSIDC. Your credibility is greatly diminished!
I expect a full accounting by Dr Scambos and the NSIDC of this hypocritical and unethical behavior. Please review the following comment on Wattsupwiththat.com:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/17/the-antarctic-wilkins-ice-shelf-collapse-media-recycles-photos-and-storylines-from-previous-years/#more-7139
And respond with a public appology!
Shame on all of you!
William H Yarber II
We need to bombard them, and the media about this fabrication.

The real shame here is that so many of our political masters continue to play the game. Why do they need to maufacture stories and drama? What is the endgame? Is it to raise taxes? Surely it is not about further destroying our economies. If AGW or as it is more popularly known now as climate change is actually occuring why do they need to lie? As a scientist I base my understanding on data and the data clearly does not support AGW.
The whole issue has been hijacked by carpetbaggers for financial gain and the truth will eventually win out. However I am afraid it will not before our landscapes are destroyed by useless wind turbines.
Worse than that is the damage it will do to the consevation and sustainability movement when people find out they have been conned.

EXPLOSION ON THE SUN: A billion-ton cloud of hot magnetized gas has just left the sun. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) recorded the explosion at the end of the day on April 17th

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection says “The average mass based on coronagraph images is 1.6 × 10^15 g.”
A tonne is 10^6 g, a billion is 10^9, so the size of this this CME is only 60% of an average CME. Please don’t exaggerate, especially not on a topic that is about exaggeration!

Remember Mercer’s prediction in 1978?
“One warning sign that a dangerous warming is beginning in Antarctica, will be a breakup of ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula just south of the January 0C isotherm; the ice shelf in the Prince Gustav Channel, and the Wordie Ice Shelf; the ice shelf in George VI Sound, and the ice shelf in Wilkins Sound.”
Mercer, Nature, 1978, v271 pp.321-325
Of course, the fact that all these shelves have disappeared (Wilkins being the last survivor) cannot be anything else but a pure coincidence, no? A very big superposition of coincidences? These shelves broke up in the fastest warming region of Antarctica, but surely warming has nothing to do with that?
Bah…REPLY: Meanwhile “Flanagan” while you cherry pick a tiny point on the peninsula which isn’t even in the same climatic regime (Maritime polar) as the main continent (Polar Icecap), the rest of Antarctica grows sea ice:
Antarctic Sea Ice for March
Extent......................Concentration
2009 5.0 million sq km 2.9 million sq km
1997 3.8 million sq km 2.2 million sq km
1980 3.5 million sq km 2.0 million sq km
This is an increase of 45% for ice concentration since 1980. Statistically significant, no?
But you’d rather believe Steig et al and his Mannomatic mathematics, now disproven.
Bah…

MSNBC is probably the biggest waste of time in cable history, look at their ratings, I think the only ones who watch that network are family members of on air hosts (and I say that loosely). They probably switch to another network during the shows too.

These so called scientists don’t work. They put out one headline and get more money to study something and then they just plagiarize or even worse use the old data and put out a new fairytail. These guys aren’t responsible. Where does NSIDC get it’s funding? Oh NASA and NOAA and ….what a crock!http://nsidc.org/about/sponsors.html

http://nsidc.org/research/bios/scambos.html
“briefed Al Gore” wow that’s important now isn’t it. He’s and activist with an agenda not a scientist.
Somebody needs to call their boss or somebody overthere like Walt Mier and point this out. This is getting really bad when this guy puts out something as false as this. “The documents are fake but the story is true”. Dan Rather 2004.

Well spotted Ron!
What is quite funny is that if you go the guardian’s pagehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/05/ice-shelf-wilkins-antarctic
(in fact it’s their sister paper the observer because it came out on Sunday April 5)
there is a section at the bottom called ‘related information’ (presumably generated automatically) that even shows the exactly same picture with the date 26 March 2008! ! 🙂
Well, the guardian is keen on recycling so I suppose it makes sense to recycle their news stories and pictures also.

Why are people who accept the actual measurements of global temperature (Hadley,NCDC,RSS and UAH which all show global cooling) refered to as sceptics whereas those who derive their world view from computer models consider themselves realists?

Ron de Haan (03:20:25) :
“The Wilkinson Ice Shelf, nothing more but an over sized ice cube machine.”
Good image!. Really, as you know, the Antarctic peninsula is where the Pacific´s warm pool water go down to refresh and go upwards along the south west american coast as the then cold Humboldt´s current. So, as you say, that “over sized cube machine” is working just fine.

The headline could equally be WUWT recycles old photos but avoids showing that the 200m thick ice, which for as long as the Wilkins ice sheet has been observed has joined Charcot island to the mainland, is now disconnected rubble! Refreezing between the floes will replace 200m thick ice with 2m thick ice, hardly a fair exchange.
Here’s the image that WUWT avoided using:http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/wilkinsarctic/pub/images/ASA_WSM_1PNPDE20090418_051350_000002382078_00162_37290_9429_100m_img.jpg
REPLY: Phil you are pathetic, I didn’t “avoid” this image, I didn’t know of its existence. Thank you for pointing it out. Since you brought up the subject of “avoidance”, why do you avoid giving your name and university affiliation. Why the academic cowardice?
– Anthony

But, nothing of any whatsoever reasons will ever convince any of those converted to the new creed, instead any reason will make them more furious.
We must find a way not to convince them but appease them. We must ask a psychiatrist how they deal with mad men in crisis.

“Since you brought up the subject of “avoidance”, why do you avoid giving your name and university affiliation. Why the academic cowardice?”
Phil., that’s a good question. Are you afraid you may be on a sinking ship?
Mike

I know this has been pointed out before, but it seems that the ice, Arctic and Antarctic, seem to be have a dampening effect on higher temperatures. It is almost as if the Earth is putting away the ice in colder times to cool the oceans and atmosphere for those times when the sun or the earth’s own core release more heat. The Beaufort Gyre in the Arctic and the currents around the Antarctic seem to create and distribute icecubes quite efficiently. This cold water/ice must have an effect.
The most recent warming started in the seventies, a few years later the 1979 became the year of greatest sea ice extent in the arctic since 1972 til the present time. As the Earth warmed, the arctic sea ice extent has been on a downward trend. 1998 was the warmest year Earth-wide, and then nine years later, we had the lowest extent of Arctic sea ice. Since then the Earth’s temperature has declined and the sea ice extent appears to be making a comeback.
I’m sure this will be torn to pieces, but it sure seems to fit the facts.

You are sooo correct Phil B.! The Antarctic has its cycles (in decades not years) with ice breaking off as does the Article with it’s ice expanding and contracting. Alarmist’s will use ANYTHING at Nature’s disposal to scare you! They are insulting YOUR intelligence!!

Hi Phil.
Do you claim that the Wilkins shelf was present during the Holocene Optimum?
Was the Holocene Optimum caused by manmade co2?
Just where are you going with your arguments?
I, for one, am willing to be your friend when you admit how hilariously wrong you were!
Your future friend,
Harold

It may be that Phil “the mysteriously unaffiliated” academic isn’t comfortable with the science, or perhaps, not sure of the decreed position of his superiors. Standing on a fence is good for muscle tone though.

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6206672.stm:
“Sediments extracted from the Antarctic seafloor show the world’s largest ice shelf has disintegrated and reappeared many times in the past.”
While the study focused on the Ross ice shelf, the results certainly apply to the smaller Wilkins ice shelf. The ice shelves disintegrate and reappear in natural cycles.
Interestingly, the authors pay obligatory homage to CO2-induced global warming near the end of the article. The implication is that even though the periodic disintegration of ice shelves follows a natural cycle, increasing CO2 concentrations will make it worse.

From the Arctic North Pole to the Antarctic South Pole an Iron Curtain/Berlin Wall is descending.
The reason: To keep you in the dark/to keep you away from the ice caps.
The Red-Green agenda advances.
Canada’s Lieberal leader STOPIGGY* is part/parcel of the unhidden conspiracy; a conspiracy in the open.
…-
“Nations set new tourism limits for Antarctica
By MATTHEW LEE – Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON — Countries with interests in Antarctica have endorsed U.S.-proposed mandatory limits on Antarctic tourism that aim to protect the continent’s fragile environment, officials said Friday.
At the conclusion of a two-week meeting in Baltimore, Md., the parties to the 50-year-old Antarctic Treaty agreed to impose binding restrictions on the size of cruise ships that land passengers there and the number of people they can bring ashore at any one time, the officials said. The move mandates, under international law, current voluntary limits.
The changes will become legally binding once each of the 28 nations that have signed the treaty ratify them. The revisions were adopted by consensus with no opposition and no hurdles to ratification are expected, said Evan Bloom, the head of the U.S. delegation.”http://www.thesunnews.com/253/story/865077.html
…-
*STOPIGGY.
“Ignatieff wants North Pole to be international park
7 Apr 2009 … Canada should push for the creation of an international park that would protect the area around the North Pole, Liberal Leader Michael …http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/04/07/tech-090407-north-pole-park.html

Why doesn’t anybody talk about the bigger picture? The total area of Antarctic ice shelves is about 1.2 million sq.km. An annual loss of one thousand sq.km at Wilkins would be 0,08 % of the total. Meanwhile, many (most?) all the other shelves may be growing, so what are we actually talking about here? Seasonal variation, dare I say?

This may or may not be pertinent.
I contacted the NSIDC after pondering the idea of an underwater earthquake causing a tsunami. What would happen to the ice sheet as it approaches the shallow coast.
I then checked and found an April 2nd earthquake of 4.5 mag. on the Pacific – Antarctic faultline. This is a small earthquake, which I do recognize. So I zipped off an email to NSIDC…
I was impressed with such a quick response:
Hello Mr. Garrett;
Living in California, I’m sure you know that a 4.5 M earthquake is rather
small; also, strike-slip quakes don’t usually form tsunamis, because that
requires some large component of vertical motion.
But the notion in general is a good one, and we looked carefully for
evidence of an effect from the massive 2004 Sumatra tsunami (Dec 26,
2004), orders of magnitude larger than the event you’ve found; very little
if any effect could be detected on the Amery Ice Shelf or other shelves
along the Indian Ocean coast of Antarctica.
Still, long-period waves, from winds, may have an effect on pushing an ice
shelf that is already unstable ‘over the edge’. The current model is that
ice shelves begin to accumulate more and more surface melt, until free
water (melt lakes or soaked snow) cover the surface in late summer; then,
some event, perhaps a train of long-period waves, triggers a break-up.
In the case of the Wilkins bridge, my colleagues and I currently think
that stresses from the large shelf area to the south of the bridge
gradually pushed the bridge until it cracked; water in the snow layers
beneath the surface accentruated fracturing, and the bridge disintegrated.
We know that the shelf had thinned by several 10s of meters in the past
few decades, as well.
best regards,
Ted Scambos.
See on the web:
Scambos et al., 2009, Earth and Planetary Science Letters;
Braun et al., 2008, The Cryosphere Discussions and The Cryosphere
MacAyeal et al., 2003, Journal of Glaciology
see also http://www.lajollasurf.org/gblpac.html
remember, shelves and icebergs survive normal waves, even storm waves, all
the time: a warming climte is required to make them susceptible.

Flanagan (06:21:17) :
“Remember Mercer’s prediction in 1978?
“One warning sign that a dangerous warming is beginning in Antarctica, will be a breakup of ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula just south of the January 0C isotherm; the ice shelf in the Prince Gustav Channel, and the Wordie Ice Shelf; the ice shelf in George VI Sound, and the ice shelf in Wilkins Sound.”
Mercer, Nature, 1978, v271 pp.321-325
Of course, the fact that all these shelves have disappeared (Wilkins being the last survivor) cannot be anything else but a pure coincidence, no? A very big superposition of coincidences? These shelves broke up in the fastest warming region of Antarctica, but surely warming has nothing to do with that?
Bah…
REPLY: Meanwhile “Flanagan” while you cherry pick a tiny point on the peninsula which isn’t even in the same climatic regime (Maritime polar) as the main continent (Polar Icecap), the rest of Antarctica grows sea ice:
Antarctic Sea Ice for March
Extent………………….Concentration
2009 5.0 million sq km 2.9 million sq km
1997 3.8 million sq km 2.2 million sq km
1980 3.5 million sq km 2.0 million sq km
This is an increase of 45% for ice concentration since 1980. Statistically significant, no?
But you’d rather believe Steig et al and his Mannomatic mathematics, now disproven.
Bah…”
Anthony,
Think about your blood pressure.
The Dutch have installed an IQ meter at the border between Holland and Belgium.
One day Flanagan passed the border after a visit in Amsterdam and what do you think happened?
The average IQ levels in both countries went up?

“WASHINGTON — Countries with interests in Antarctica have endorsed U.S.-proposed mandatory limits on Antarctic tourism that aim to protect the continent’s fragile environment, officials said Friday.”-from AP article.
“98% of the continent is covered with a thick, ancient sheet of
ice. The average thickness of this ice is 7,000 feet with a maximum depth
of nearly 3 miles (15,000 feet).”-from Antarctic Ice Instructional Module #4
Man, if people walk on that ice just imagine the devastation!

The McBride Smeargate scandal in the UK seems to be on the verge of making political hacks a little more honest. Let’s hope that the Scambos Wilkin ice sheet lies will finally reach a similar tipping point with the Monbiots of this world.
Given that human stupidity apparently knows no bounds I won’t hold my breath.

Well if you look at that top Picture that says Wilkins Ice shelf on it; the one with the inset of Antarctica; directly above the blue piece that broke up you see a much larger piece with a couple of curved walls on the lower right sides.
Svend Hendriksen; a Nobel Peace Price winning Danish Glaciologist, sent me a picture of that last year pointing out that big piece. Based on the height of the walls they can determine that that whole piece collapsed about 50 years ago and is growing back. The walls are just 50 years of precipitation on the longer lived sections.
Svend lives in Greenland; and sometimes posts here. He keeps track of this Stuff for the Danish Government. Since the satellites come by his place every day, he can get photos downloaded from either end of the earth any time he wants them.
I figured most people recognized that old photo that has the big shear fracture in it. I’ve got some other old photos that the local newspapers keep rehashing showing the waterfalls going down holes on Greenland; even have the very same people standing alongside them looking at this very common occurrence.
Talk about journalistic fraud; hey newspapers; ever wonder why we don’t buy your rubbish on dead tree anymore ?
George

Mike Bryant (09:51:46) :
“WASHINGTON — Countries with interests in Antarctica have endorsed U.S.-proposed mandatory limits on Antarctic tourism that aim to protect the continent’s fragile environment, officials said Friday.”-from AP article.
“98% of the continent is covered with a thick, ancient sheet of
ice. The average thickness of this ice is 7,000 feet with a maximum depth
of nearly 3 miles (15,000 feet).”-from Antarctic Ice Instructional Module #4
Man, if people walk on that ice just imagine the devastation!”
Yes Mike, if there are places on earth where even a blind horse can’t inflict any damage, it is at the Poles.

The ice shelf is such a tiny little picture of a much larger one, that says ice is growing in the Antartic. The only reason we probably even talk about it is because it is touted by AWG as the poster child for melting on Antartica. However compare our interest with the author of said novel. He probably specializes in that specific area of expertise. Which means it is his livelyhood. Now considering that funding is needed to keep him eating, of course he is going to make what he is doing as interesting as possible. How much money would he get if he said, hey this ice shelf pushes out over the ocean and breaks off all of the time. It melts too:PJack Green (08:45:05) : Thanks Phil for posting. We here are now going to start checking you guys to see how accurate your work is. Isn’t peer review wonderful. It kind of keeps everyone, uh honest. Thanks for posting.
I dont know who Phil is but it sort of bothers me to see folks threatining to go after him personally. Thats an AWG tactic and we are above that. The beauty of this site has always been that we can come here to discuss with others who may or may not share our views. I have seen quite a few people turned from devoute AWGism by such discussions. I myself was turned by such discussions. I have learned a lot from you guys but it was because both sides got to display and I got to become aware and make my own decisions. I like it when folks like Walt ect.. stops by and share. We get to see into their reasoning and they get to hear ours. We may give them a spark, and maybe they give us one. Please do not let that stop with petty threats that drive folks away or we are no better than the others.

Phil. 08:02:13 and kim 00:00:13
Are you beginning to understand the quality of the science and the rhetoric of the fellows you are defending? You should re-examine assumptions in the light of dropping temperatures worldwide and increasing ice at both poles. I know you have the scientific sensibility to do so. So let’s see some insight. Please. It’s important.
======================================

Phil. (08:02:13) :
The headline could equally be WUWT recycles old photos but avoids showing that the 200m thick ice, which for as long as the Wilkins ice sheet has been observed has joined Charcot island to the mainland, is now disconnected rubble! Refreezing between the floes will replace 200m thick ice with 2m thick ice, hardly a fair exchange.
Here’s the image that WUWT avoided using:http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/wilkinsarctic/pub/images/ASA_WSM_1PNPDE20090418_051350_000002382078_00162_37290_9429_100m_img.jpg
Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery is a great tool
for 24 / 7, rain or shine, surface data collection. However, to
try and compare optical or passive microwave imagery to
SAR is very misleading. Anyone who has worked with SAR
know this! It has, depending on frequency, pulse output
power, receiver sensitivity, antenna gain, AGC settings,
ect. , an ability to penetrate that other sensors do not! You
cannot compare them. Get it?

Ric Werme (06:06:23) :
“Ron de Haan (03:54:10) :
> OT, Huge CME produced by the sun http://www.spaceweather.com/
They say merely:
EXPLOSION ON THE SUN: A billion-ton cloud of hot magnetized gas has just left the sun. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) recorded the explosion at the end of the day on April 17thhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection says “The average mass based on coronagraph images is 1.6 × 10^15 g.”
A tonne is 10^6 g, a billion is 10^9, so the size of this this CME is only 60% of an average CME. Please don’t exaggerate, especially not on a topic that is about exaggeration!”
Ric,
Exaggeration was not the objective.
The visual simply looked spectacular.
I get your point though and I agree.

Phil you posted an image dated today, in rebuttal to a story dated yesterday, about photos recycled from a year ago.
Does anyone else see the humor in this exchange?
I simply say, it is ice, it breaks up and reforms and this fascination around multi-year float ice at one location everyone agrees has anomalous climate patterns, simply deflects from the the story which is the MSM addressing these claims without any research or effort to collaborate them, re-using stock images without explanation, etc. This is not even a climate issue it goes straight to the heart of why Journalism is dead, politics drives all the news cycle and newspapers are nothing more than a collection of “endorsed”: blogs.
Listen some people will never be convinced that Nature is the most humbling force on the planet and Climate always Changes, and Ice Melts and re-freezes and birds change their migratory routes and Oceans have phases, cooling was not predicted, etc.
It does not matter right now, we have 60 Days to prevent a economic and social disaster in the USA at the hands of a radical left who are a single issue body…
Stop Cap and Trade
Stop the EPA GHG Listing Proposal
Spending trillions in new taxation now does not fix any of our real problems and 7.2B to the EPA is not “Stimulus”, and average people are the only ones who can stop it, our elected leaders do not care about anything but their jobs, so even if you have a Dem as a representative, they are still YOUR REPRESENTATIVE.

Man, if people walk on that ice just imagine the devastation!
“Yes Mike, if there are places on earth where even a blind horse can’t inflict any damage, it is at the Poles.”
If… IF they would really like to do something about ice, perhaps it would make more sense to keep icebergs off the Arctic sea ice. But then again, perhaps that is not as big a problem as I imagine it to be.

NSIDC is a division of INSTAAR -the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), a the University of Colorado at Boulder.
INSTAAR’s director is James White, a geologist and paleoclimatologist with an environmentally correct agenda, ie, one driven to enviro-wacky notions like ”sustainability.”http://instaar.colorado.edu/people/bios/white.html
Thus, last week, when White faced the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Chris Horner to debate global warming at Colorado Christian University, White argued that
we should take climate change as a warning to lighten our footprint — “training wheels for sustainability.” In endorsing the Kyoto Treaty’s agenda, White pleaded ”What is our responsibility to the Earth?” In other words, it isn’t science that determines our policies towards climate change, but the right environmental ethic.
At the debate, an auditorium for 300 overflowed with another 100 ouside. Amazingly, the Denver Post’s environmental reporter refused to cover this event, saying that having Horner there made it “not a debate… not news.”
But getting back to the egregious ”reporting” and ”recycling” by NSIDC (above), this treatment makes perfect sense as White’s cause trumps mere ”science.” How shameful.
SOURCEhttp://backboneamerica.net/2009/04/09/responsibility-vs-do-no-harm/

I notice at NSIDC that the photo for Wilkins, 10 April 2009 ( MODIS visible) is exactly the same as the photo for AVHRR image (visible) 20 February 1994.
The very same photo. Please confirm that my eyes are not deceiving me.http://nsidc.org/data/iceshelves_images/wilkins.html

Mike Bryant (11:20:16) :
“Man, if people walk on that ice just imagine the devastation!
“Yes Mike, if there are places on earth where even a blind horse can’t inflict any damage, it is at the Poles.”
If… IF they would really like to do something about ice, perhaps it would make more sense to keep icebergs off the Arctic sea ice. But then again, perhaps that is not as big a problem as I imagine it to be”.
Mike,
We could tow some big ones to California.

Orson (11:38:10)
“At the debate, an auditorium for 300 overflowed with another 100 ouside. Amazingly, the Denver Post’s environmental reporter refused to cover this event, saying that having Horner there made it “not a debate… not news.”
Here’s an example as to why Warmists do not welcome or report open debate.http://www.grumpyoldsod.com/global%20garbage%2016.asp
AFAIK, this also never made it to the mass media.

Don’t be too hard on the Grauniad (as we affectionally call it here in the UK) for using that photo.
If you go to the British Antarctic Survey page below, dated 6th April 2009, what’s the first photo in their story about the ice bridge collapse? You guessed it!http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_bas/news/news_story.php?id=823

Phil. (08:02:13) :
Your argument is the weakest form of rebuttal. The “But what about X” argument. You do not address the point at all. Seems Wilkins collapses all the time, and recovers. Seems also that media outlets like to put up dramatic pictures of it and tell us that it’s another fearful portent of things to come from global warming. Unfortunately, this isn’t true, hence your reverting to the “But what about X” argument.

If… IF they would really like to do something about ice, perhaps it would make more sense to keep icebergs off the Arctic sea ice. But then again, perhaps that is not as big a problem as I imagine it to be”.
Mike,
We could tow some big ones to California.
oops I meant ice BREAKERS… silly me

Today’s best quote from the Catlin crew – 4/18/09 – Temp @ -25C
“Crossing open water is now par for the course with polar travel. As spring progresses, the warmer temperatures cause the ice to melt and break up, meaning the frequency and size of leads increases. The emergence of open water at this stage of the survey is typical for this time of year and will become almost a daily occurrence towards the end of the expedition. So, today was a practice run for the days ahead…. ”
They truly are advancing science – now finding ice that melts at -25c

I thought this wilkinson farce was cherry picking from IPCC et al. -And then it turns our there was no Cherry!? I have no words.
I really hope this sad AGW tragedic “science” disaster ends very very soon, and again thank you to WUWT and everyone doing their bit.

Arn Riewe (14:14:58) :
Today’s best quote from the Catlin crew – 4/18/09 – Temp @ -25C
“Crossing open water is now par for the course with polar travel.”
Sounds bad.
But…http://thethreepoles.com/blog/
“Warm weather, strong winds, and continued drift to the east.
We were on the go for 10 hours and we made 12.3 miles north. Our current position is N88.35.04, W69.39.00.”

“One warning sign that a dangerous warming is beginning in Antarctica, will be a breakup of ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula just south of the January 0C isotherm; the ice shelf in the Prince Gustav Channel, and the Wordie Ice Shelf; the ice shelf in George VI Sound, and the ice shelf in Wilkins Sound.”
Of course, the fact that all these shelves have disappeared (Wilkins being the last survivor)
Rubbish. The George IV Sound iceshelf is still intact and its by far the largest.
The ice shelf in the Prince Gustav Channel is much smaller and on the other side of the Peninsula. It broke up prior to 1995. Although this icesheet hasn’t existed for most of the last 5,000 years. So we have just returned to the Holocene norm.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Gustav_Channel

Mike Bryant (08:50:38) : “[…]The most recent warming started in the seventies, a few years later the 1979 became the year of greatest sea ice extent in the arctic since 1972 til the present time. As the Earth warmed, the arctic sea ice extent has been on a downward trend. 1998 was the warmest year Earth-wide, and then nine years later, we had the lowest extent of Arctic sea ice. Since then the Earth’s temperature has declined and the sea ice extent appears to be making a comeback.
I’m sure this will be torn to pieces, but it sure seems to fit the facts.”
I don’t think anyone has replied to this comment of yours.
IMHO it is exactly as one would expect. Over short timescales, warm/cool conditions should not correlate as much with ice amount as with rate of change of ice amount. Just as albedo relates to rate of change of ocean temp not absolute ocean temp.
What I think is happening is that the Earth’s climate over decadal+ timescales is driven by ocean temperature, which is in turn driven by albedo, which may well turn out to be driven by GCRs (we need the CLOUD experiment at CERN to be more sure), which we know are significantly driven by the sun.
Albedo was decreasing up to 2000, then increased again. So the oceans were warming fastest in 2000, then the rate of warming slowed, and in about 2006 they started cooling again. But when warm oceans just start cooling they are still warm, so they are still melting ice until they have cooled for a while. Consequently, the Arctic ice went on melting in 2007.
It is very hard to nail these things to specific years, and things like the El Nino that caused 1998 to be the warmest year (by surface temp) add a lot of noise, so it would be easy to argue about the dates.
For the basic principle, I suppose you could look at how the derivative of a sine wave is 90 deg out of sync with the sine wave itself.

Mike and Mike: Also, the earth functions as a pump, absorbing more energy in the tropics than it admits and pumping heat toward the poles where more energy is emitted than absorbed. There is a lag built into that process.
Yet another reason I’m sure that the Arctic is now freezing back up.
=========================================

I simply say, it is ice, it breaks up and reforms and this fascination around multi-year float ice at one location
You are confusing sea ice with glacial ice. Once glacial iceshelf ice breaks up it doesn’t reform. It floats away as icebergs.
An iceshelf (like any glacier) is a constant process of new ice forming near the source pushing older ice closer to where it will break up and melt. This takes many thousands of years for the, small by Antarctic standards, Antarctic Peninsula glaciers. Also note the Wilkins iceshelf forms as glaciers on Alexander Island (about the size of Long Island) and not the Antarctic Peninsula.
Whether a glacier is advancing or retreating (gaining or losing ice mass) is determined by many factors and will vary over many timescales (decade, century, millenium).
We can say with reasonable confidence that Antarctic Peninsula iceshelfs/glaciers have retreated over the last century, advanced over the last millenium or two, and have seen a decrease in retreat over the last decade.
Whether the last decade signals a new trend is the same debate as whether the surface temperatures are in a new downward trend or just a temporary slowdown in the warming.

I’m not sure what concerns me more, the back and forth gotchas on global warming or the incompetent media that don’t seem to notice they are reporting/being fed the same story every year and using the same pictures to do so. Where are the editors!?

I sent this message to Al Gore in an attempt to calm his hysteria.
The Earth is simply changing due to inherent chemical properties. Every negative aspect of the global warming theory can be also realized as a positive……..we must realize nature’s laws and let our current scientific beliefs fall by the wayside.
THE HEART OF MAN ADRIFT AS EARTH AND HER WATERS SPEAK
It is the Earth who speaks all in creation, as housed memory of our very existence, of all energies required to sustain all languages in one mind, all pulsing in one heart, all answers in one word, are housed here for any individual on her surface who asks, desiring any message at any time to be delivered.
We fear, failing to understand.
We worry needlessly.
We accuse without cause.
We place blame where none should be.
We suffer the pain of disease, ignoring the cause.
We feign the wages of war, when opposition is our invention.
We grieve for those who suffer endless hunger, yet the world has plenty.
We are without answers, for we have failed in our duty to ask.
All is as it should be. Everything on this Earth, every man woman and child, every animal, every plant was conceived by this great planet. It is she who dreamed of life in the first place. Our experience a gift.
The Earth is alive. She lives and dies just as we do. Her cycles extend through billions of years, so we fail to grasp the concept.
All we see before our eyes is a miracle. The living, dying and resurrection of Earth.
Nothing we could possibly do could alter course of her invention. We are to gain insight through the changes, understand her cycles and document memory of these for all who are to follow.
IT IS SHE WHO SPEAKS.
When our actions taint our thoughts, and we come to believe we’ve gone against our morals, our values and concern for one another, we must re-think and come to understand the truth.
We have no power. We are not the force. The decision for all that is or ever will be lies in realm of Earth’s creation.
We have not caused the buildup of CO2 in her atmosphere. She has by exhaling density of rest matter.
We have not forced the melting of ice caps. She has by speeding up the rotation of her core.
We are not behind the depletion of ozone. She is, so that it can be utilized in conjunction with other elements to heal herself.
We live within realm of Earth’s dream and purpose. In time of change she will create the reaction to attain equilibrium.
WATER
Imagine yourself adrift in an open sea. There are no obstructions as it is fluid, each particle miniscule, blending balanced in an equal exchange, giving to the freedom and flight of evaporation and the steadfast horizontal viscous flow. Always moving and swirling in motion is this never ending draw of viscosity.
Sailing now with the wind are we, in direction of the sun’s horizon and ever so merrily drifting with the tide.
And so it is, you realize how much your are alike. Yet all the while knowing there are limits and boundary to which you must adhere. For the likeness and the flows opposition also finds you there.
A sustaining world she is within, and yet she exists within another to nurture their being. Without her we would cease to be, for our balance is one timed with nature as is the sun to rise and each plant to grow in exchange of hydrogen and oxygen’s glow. Of these things man has mind to reason and know. There is life within her seizing and reigning at depths untold. A place unseen that we are oblivious to. Her calculated meandering encroaches as her insiduous nature becomes insolent, invading as vast boundary surmounts the land.
We are not unlike her. Our behaviors manifest deep within too. And we, just as she, react to the stresses placed upon us. She seeks no vengeance as the crest gains momentum of the internal force which drives her, nor does she seek to extinguish life in the depths of the waves trough.
Earth’s mass too beckons this internal force which shifts dense boundary as she engulfs the shore, ravaging and eroding all that vulnerable above as so below, drawing unto her every ridge the sand that the wind so meticulously heaped into foothills. She creates a pass through which she might travel, moving slowly now over land and through valleys like a glacier, cresting with momentum to cradle and nurture the land, pleading for health of the water’s purging cleanse.
And as these waves settle gently now on new shores, submerged beneath pressures we fear, is a life without knowledge of her fierce, engulfing motion. She evenly and warmly fulfills their needs with elements and minerals pouring forth, bonding the constituents of harmony to reason survival. Life to feed life, giving without question and in no need of answers. For what is, just is.
She is the sea. A mightly ocean encapsulated within a vast boundary of fluid dreams. A responding body of water unmerciful at times, who records eternity with incrustations on rock, sifting and shifting to shape each grain of sand by rhythmic beats of her waves upon the shore. We exist above, seemingly beyond this boundary, never to sustain within. We tread upon that which surrounds her, aways taking heed to the intonations made by her voice as waves crash, then blend into the shore.
Life as the ship at sea shall always be set adrift. Searching to seek the calm and peace of the shore, only to once and again find ourselves out adhering to the pull of the tides. This pull for salvation shall set us free beyond safety of the perimeters set in motion of oppositions claim. To accept the flow, though it be against wish of the shore, is within our domain. These ventures are to guide us to our destiny. Intuituion and instinct speak without word, therein harmonizing our actions.
She feeds reflecting the energy of the sun and glow of the moon. She draws the clouds as the horizontal force of the winds deprive they blend. But as the rains begin their vertical descent, she opens gracefully accepting each drop. Continuous is the cycle of these matter and in them we find ourselves conjoined in basis of our likeness. Water is responsible as it never fails the simplistic rise of ascension through separation in gaseous exchange, only to descend and here once again join our hands in viscous motion, so that we too might now drift.
We find reason and therefore understanding of the things we do. In regard and neglect for all she gives and maintains, we are taking for granted with an ever assuming posture she is eternal.. We fail to realize we must give in return to maintain balance in nature. She knows our actions will reap her power and might, for it is through our salvation she takes back all that we failed to give.
Man’s carelessness, stripping and raping seeds of hers and our futures. Now in our pollution dense we see a saturating and weighing of the evaporatory release of energies vital, which mislaid shall sink this ship out to sea, never to find the shore and to submerge neath weight of our own doing.
The sea need not reason her actions, as thought does not find her place unaware. It is as it is. She seeks no harm nor vengeance, and justice comes of our thoughts demand. There is no right or wrong, as it is the way of things. For we do not gravitate in her tide. We find our pull amidst cranial chamber behind window of our eye.
As nature corrects the imbalance in the brain and the projection which has distorted our thoughts and vision blinding us, what comes into view finds man dying as mother earth and circulation in her streams gain the tide to reach out and touch healing that which sustains us. And should the solidity of matter prevent she seep into the place where stillness flows, she shall no longer gain way for strength to prolong that which she knows. Yet all the while purifying in mechansim to lift into the air weights which seem immovable. Her energies find obstruction in the barriers which our minds have taught our hands to build. Now our reasoning unknowingly negligent has construct in opposition her flow. A potential detached in borders which parallel insanity, and the link of unconscious thought owerwhelms behavior.
We take that to set as a potion, curious to cause as it once poured in unison and we form the substance to line our concrete jungles. It strangles all beneath, preventing the waters seepage and overflow to absorb in parched and hungry soil. Here again we find ourselves with misguided intent as the thought to precede purpose is caught unaware.
In time to pass ever so swift we find striking resemblance of our pain and disease mimicked in nature all around us and we wonder what went wrong with the intention of our creative thought. To each who live and are derived from substance alike, perchance cause can be extract from life not far extinct and we can then begin a renewal of our wrongs.
FOR SHE IS THAT VAST AND RESPONDING BODY OF WATER RECORDING AND ETCHING ETERNITY IN STONE, AS SHE SIFTS AND SHIFTS EACH GRAIN OF SAND WITH RHYTHMIC BEATS OF HER WAVES AS THEY CRASH UPON THE SHORE.
I speak of these waters created by this EARTH.
Earths time of change has come, so she uses her power to mend and heal all wounds. She melts the ice caps by speeding up the rotation of her iron core. This core shifts the electromagnetic fields that now hold us on a frequency not familiar with our place of origin. The evaporative nature of hydrogen builds to breach the barriers of the O3 layer or ozone. In so doing, the CO2 buildup in the atmosphere diminishes as Earth’s power breaks this bond to yield in conjunction with the aforementioned, the hydrogen carbonate (HCO3) which infuses the atmosphere recalibrating the ph. The end result is water. With more water in the atmosphere the variables such as refraction and gravitational constraints, which we consider normal , shall be no more. Time’s negative influence on man’s behavior will reverse in that of its opposition. There will be no choice in the matter. We shall adhere the dictation of which she speaks.
Her land mass has been seizing in energetic convulsive shakes preparing for the resurrection of matter. Her contained rest mass is being shattered by the silent infiltrating and unspoken diffusion of sufficient energy to recalibrate the ratios.
Everything we do and have done for millineum is in preparation for Earth’s resurrection. She will not die, and in so doing shall save all that lives on her surface. We cannot shift the tide, we cannot alter course of the flow, for it is she who speaks.
All our aggression, evil actions, self hatred, and warring mentality will cease to be. The light emit as Earth attains balance will fill mankind in the blink of an eye, and we shall all know that paradise existed right here all along.
We must temper ourselves…………dutifully awaiting the moment when from that center, the place of our true origin, all is equidistant to any and every where or when on the periphery.
Tis not founded in the laws of science, but in the law of nature. Here, everything unwinds naturally.
SUI GENERIS
“Endowed with force”
The endowment
Embodied
Cloaked linguistically
Boundaries fixed
Set in stone
Beneath is veiled the force.
Fused
Adherence
A domain alone
The mass at rest
Inherent
Suffering
Contained within
Destiny’s test
Angular indifference
Energy is to mass
Life exists
In lieu of the Impasse!
– Blanche McLanahan
——————————————————————————–REPLY: That should do it, thanks. – Anthony

We were in New Zealand last year, where several glaciers that had been retreating 30 years ago have advanced significantly for the last 10.
All data that doesn’t fit the current orthodoxy is ignored:Antarctic temperatures have held steady or declined; northern hemisphere temperatures are declining again. Climate change happens all the time, we just don’t have any real idea what drives it.
I say follow the ice core data and THINK a little about the big picture. The Greenland and Antarctic data seem to correlate quite well, but Antarctica has several glacial cycles in its record but Greenland only one. In fact, the Greenland ice record only goes back to the beginning of the last cooling period. So, watch for instability in the Greenland ice sheet (which would occur after a long warming period – I think it is somehow involved as a trigger for the next cooling/ice age.

I’m not suprised by this at all. Global warming is a multi-billion dollar industry so the people profiting from this (Gore?) will do whatever they can to keep the fear alive so they can continue to line their pockets. This is a great post and its too bad that info like this doesn’t end up in the main stream media for more eyes to view.
I’ve read, and encourage others to research this, that other planets in our solar system are heating up and are experiencing global warming yet Earth is the only planet with life on it so how do you explain that these other planets are going through it?
Again, great post!

My math is wrong? And the researchers at the NSIDC cannot compute a trend from a time series?
Here’s a nice example. Consider the following “carefully” selected three points out of a time series:
t X
—–
0 1
2 -0.4
15 -0.76
Is there any way you would be able to convince us that these three points are a “good mathematical” representation of the underlying process?
Because this is actually what you get from a cosinus function, where the trend is exactly 0.

Flanagan, the globe is cooling and has been for at least 5 years. Thanks to the oceanic oscillations it will continue to cool for at least another 20. If the sun gets involved it may cool for another century. The role of CO2 in climate has been exaggerated, and if we make policy based on that exaggeration, millions will die from the consequences of that policy.
Now, if you don’t want that on your head in a couple of decades, please reconsider your position.
=======================================

Hi kim!
I’m sure you must have tons of scientific publications supporting so evident claims, don’t you? I mean, published in scientific journals and such. Or do you base your certitudes on blog-science only?
CO2 is already regulated in Europe, and believe me or not it didn’t cause millions of deaths…

I think it is disingenuous to show these photos at different periods of the year and form ridiculous conclusions from it. Let’s see pictures taken at the same time each year. Only then we can judge properly.

Flanagan 09:52:30
That’s pretty amusing citing the CO2 regulations in Europe. Are you aware that the carbon credit market there has crashed disastrously twice and has confounded the action of capital markets and discouraged the progress of industry? But, nice try setting up a strawman.
If we are cooling long term, then the minimal effect carbon dioxide has on temperature and the moderate effect it has fertilizing crops will keep millions of the poorest of this earth, presently living on the margin, from freezing and starving to death. If we encumber carbon in an attempt to mitigate a global warming that isn’t happening instead of adapting to a global cooling that is happening, millions will die. Even a 5% die-off of the earth’s population from crop failures will be 350 million people.
If you think the Western elite can be protected from the consequences of such a holocaust you have another think coming. And if you think those pushing the false paradigm of CO2=AGW will avoid some, or even a lot, of the blame for that holocaust, then you have another think coming.
Why can you not observe the present falling temperatures, and not re-evaluate some of your beliefs and assumptions? It would be scientific, nay even profoundly ethical, to do so.
======================================

Carbon Cap and Trade or more direct taxation is regressive taxation in the extreme. Do you like that?
C’mon, I know many of the people with faith in the CO2=AGW paradigm are good-hearted people with the health of the earth and its people as among their strongest motivation. Stop believing this chimera and get real. This hoax about carbon is counterproductive to solving the real environmental problems we should be solving instead.
============================================

Hi Ohio,
you mean a tropical hot spot just like this one:http://www.realclimate.org/images/raobcore_v1.4_trop.jpg
So, yes I did find it. Note that troposphere has a +0.3 anomaly while upper atmosphere has negative anomalies – i.e. the troposphere is warming and strato cooling. Too bad that’s exactly what all the models predict, isn’t’ t?

Phil. (08:02:13) :
REPLY: Phil you are pathetic, I didn’t “avoid” this image, I didn’t know of its existence. Thank you for pointing it out. Since you brought up the subject of “avoidance”, why do you avoid giving your name and university affiliation. Why the academic cowardice?
– Anthony
Some due diligence before writing the piece would have revealed that the rash of media stories in early April was occasioned by the ESA report by Angelika Humbert. MSNBC, CNN, Bloomberg all referenced it and several of us posted images from the ESA satellite on here so I’m surprised you missed it.
However unable to rebut the argument unfortunately you resorted to ad hominem! I would like to know why I am the only poster here who is expected to list his academic affiliation? For example where on this site can I find Steven Goddard’s academic affiliation, or is he an ‘academic coward’ too? For that matter what are the academic affiliations of Ohioholic, Kim, Bryant etc.?

kim (10:48:40) :
Phil. 08:02:13 and kim 00:00:13
Are you beginning to understand the quality of the science and the rhetoric of the fellows you are defending? You should re-examine assumptions in the light of dropping temperatures worldwide and increasing ice at both poles. I know you have the scientific sensibility to do so. So let’s see some insight. Please. It’s important.
The insight is that the northern section of the Wilkins icesheet is now irretrievably gone, not to be seen again in our lifetimes!
Contrary to the nonsense in the original post “As the following historical satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf show, the disintegration / re-growth is an annual event (winter ice re-growth season; summer melt season).”, what has been lost is perennial, 200m thick ice, its temporary replacement by seasonal, ~1m thick ice is not regrowth!D. King (10:55:58) :
Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery is a great tool
for 24 / 7, rain or shine, surface data collection. However, to
try and compare optical or passive microwave imagery to
SAR is very misleading. Anyone who has worked with SAR
know this! It has, depending on frequency, pulse output
power, receiver sensitivity, antenna gain, AGC settings,
ect. , an ability to penetrate that other sensors do not! You
cannot compare them. Get it?
I didn’t compare them, however here’s the animation of the SAR images over the last two weeks showing the final disintegration of the ice bridge between Charcot and Latady islands, are you suggesting that this hasn’t happened?http://webservices.esa.int/wilkinsarctic/wilkins.php?type=full

Ohioholic (13:02:47) :
Phil. (08:02:13) :
Your argument is the weakest form of rebuttal. The “But what about X” argument. You do not address the point at all. Seems Wilkins collapses all the time, and recovers.
Actually that’s just the point I was making the Wilkins has been progressively collapsing from season to season but it is not recovering at all!Seems also that media outlets like to put up dramatic pictures of it and tell us that it’s another fearful portent of things to come from global warming. Unfortunately, this isn’t true, hence your reverting to the “But what about X” argument.
See the movie that I posted above, the northern part of the Wilkins has gone for good, a total collapse that took less than 2 weeks from the appearance of the first new cracks in early April.

John F. Hultquist (09:14:08) :
It may be that Phil “the mysteriously unaffiliated” academic isn’t comfortable with the science, or perhaps, not sure of the decreed position of his superiors. Standing on a fence is good for muscle tone though.
Is that why you also remain ‘academically unaffiliated’ John? Personally I couldn’t care less what the ‘decreed position of my superiors’ might be, never have.

Hey Flanagan,
Why don’t you try your trend line math on the function y = e ^(-1/x^2) , say for the interval 0</=x</=1 .
It starts out at y = 0 and at zero velocity; also zero acceleration, in fact every one of its derivatives is zero at X = 0.
Yet somehow it manages to get somewhere. Try ‘splaining that trend !
George

kim (20:53:15) :
Yes, indeed; what about it?
=================
Well it’s only growing in the Antarctic at present. After reaching a minimum about 2 months ago slightly below the 1979-2000 mean it’s currently about 1Mm^2 behind last year, perhaps we’ll have a second below average year?
Was that what you had in mind?

Phil 21:17:25
Well, not exactly. I was speaking more of the Southern Sea Ice Area anomaly well above the 1979-2000 mean, and the Northern Sea Ice Area recovering toward the 1979-2000 mean, both according to Cryosphere Today. Additionally, the Arctic Sea Ice Extent, for this date is higher than for the last seven years. Yet more additionally, total ice is in Antarctica is higher than before. And you want to maximize the publicity value of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, in a known local hot spot. Why not let people know the ‘whole truth’, that what is happening at Wilkins has little relevance to the debate over global climate?
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The fact that the press recycles photos is well known. It is also known that sea ice forms in the Antarctic Ocean in the southern winter, and almost all of it melts out in the Antarctic summer. In aerial photographs, it is easy to confuse the sea ice, which is one year ice, with the ice shelf, which is multi year ice fed in part by glacial flows. It is pretty clear that many posters here have been confused about this.
In addition, the following sentence in the blog post is incorrect: But, as can be seen from the following January 1996 and March 2008 images, there has been hardly any change in a decade. Look at the photos below from the appinsys web site:
The author is not looking at the picture very closely. I am not impressed.
Looking at the photo the edge of the Wilkins ice shelf has moved upward in the picture relative to the two islands. In the older picture the Wilkins ice shelf edge is a straight line connection the two islands.
In the new picture the edge if the ice shelf has moved upward and no longer touches the smaller island on the middle left of the picture. This would seem to be a substantial retreat. An that is before the breakup in 2009.
The pictures don’t show that the work of scientists, who conclude that the ice shelves in West Antarctica are breaking up, and have retreated rapidly, in recent years, is wrong.

Eric 09:52:27
Hey, glaciers calve, thus carving. And the Palmer Peninsula is a known hot spot. So what’s it all about, Alfie?
I was interested to note that the Wilkins Ice Shelf is estimated to be several hundred years old. Perhaps formed during the Little Ice Age. We have been recovering from the Little Ice Age. Perhaps that’s the meaning of this.
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kim (10:45:15) :Eric 09:52:27
Hey, glaciers calve, thus carving. And the Palmer Peninsula is a known hot spot. So what’s it all about, Alfie?
I was interested to note that the Wilkins Ice Shelf is estimated to be several hundred years old. Perhaps formed during the Little Ice Age. We have been recovering from the Little Ice Age. Perhaps that’s the meaning of this.
At least you accept the fact that the ice shelf is receding based on the photos;
What does recovering from the Little Ice Age mean? The little ice age was not really a global phenomenon. Various regions experienced cooler temperatures at different times. We really aren’t sure what phenomena caused the little ice age. Was it solar irradience, volcanoes or what? How do we know what we are recovering from it? What is the theory behind this slogan?

eric 19:20:00
You have no proof that the Little Ice Age was not a world wide phenomenon. It was during the Maunder Minimum, a solar phenomenon, so if the sun caused it, it was a global phenomenon. The other main contender for cause is a series of volcanoes, also presumably with a global effect.
Sorry, the Hockey Stick was crook’d. Neither blade nor shaft were honest.
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I can’t believe you folks are so blase about this.
Firstly, in the span of history, citing 1999 and events within the last decade does not make something “frequent”. It just means its building momentum.
Regarding your graph. LOOK AT IT.
Take the low points from it. It used to dip close to -2. It hasn’t done that in decades now. Obviously, there are fluctuations for given years, but I was startled by the overall trend.
Its going up. It dips, it swerves, but its ultimately getting warmer. Does it only count if its a straight line graph? If so, I haven’t encountered any natural graph that meets those prerequisites.
You guys are drawing conclusions based on beliefs rather than data, and not looking at the overall trends. You’re looking at graphs, which is better than most of the masses, but you’re not looking at the overall arc.
The other question, is why is it so bad for humans to create sustainable energy? I mean evolutionarily speaking and in terms of US national interests.
I don’t think we should be reliant on unstable, dictatorial theocracies to power our life styles. In that regard, I guess I’m a bit of an isolationist.
I also think that creating sustainable energy is the next step in human progress. That we can truly control and harness energy to suit our purposes without squabbling over it.

Also, I’d like links to scientists to read their points on this.
Frankly, unless one of you is a geologist or climatologist, you are an amateur without proper training. Link to a prominent scientist who agrees with you, as I’d be very curious to read it.

By your own submission, the statistics in the graph you posted clearly show that average temperatures aren’t hitting the lows that they normally hit. Not to mention that the first two “high” temperature readings are higher than ever before. So, it’s obvious this isn’t just the media “blowing hot air”. It’s all of us.

This story might be a bad example of global warming, with facts not backing up the story. But global warming is very much real.
Don’t you see the summers getting longer and hotter, winters much cooler. Temperatures rising across the globe. And you still say, global warming is a myth. Wake Up!

It is a little idiot to believe this story. If you look at the ASAR Envisat image which has illustrated the shelf break up you’ll understand just how much ice has broken up. and notice that the photos he uses for comparison and in different months. He uses summer to show break up, and winter to show how the ice shelf rejuvenates itself. what he is showing is winter sea-ice in regions where the ice shelf used to be. Just for the record for all of you. Sea-ice in antarctica is growing at a rate of 1.4% per decade. but it is extremely variable. Sea-ice is not the important global warming monitoring mechanism in antarctica, ice shelves and mass balance are. “Grace” gravity measurements, “Radarsat” Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar, and “ICEsat” Lasar Altimetry indicate that the Antarctic Ice Sheet as a whole is losing mass on the order of 25 GT per year. This does not represent a large amount because the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is losing extensive amounts of ice, but warming in high elevations of the Eastern Antarctic Ice Sheet has resulted in increased accumulation of precipitation.

Ok, to those that think AGW is real and that it is responsible for this “unusual” event.
It is well documented that over the last 100 years public relations companies have developed techniques to increase the wants and needs to create the consumer, debt ridden society we live in today. So “we” are responsible, yet do you want to mean “we” as in us, this generation, the people who are alive at this very second, all 6.5 billion (approx) and then create new ways to tax us for the events that have led to this moment in human time or do you want to think about re-wording your terminology and say “the human species over its course of evolution”. Or would it be more prudent to look at the people responsible for creating the consumer society “we” live in out of greed to be able to think of and treat us like cattle, including you and I mean those that are trying to defend the very core of what they stand for, control and power.
My issue is that if you believe “we” are responsible then tax us, if you can prove to me it is us at this moment who are responsible for the events that are or might be unfolding then I will do what you say is fair.
If you cannot prove it is us at this moment in time then I ask you to consider looking at the people/families that have made money in creating this consumer debt riddelled society we live in and then follow the money that is asking for certain things today to suppress and further indebt us. To me if this is happening (which I highly disagree it is but that’s another matter) then you should look at creating policy that takes the money from those people. If you did it would remove hunger, disease, poverty the second you take the money from them and put it into a “social” account for all of those “we’s” that are alive at this moment and give us the opportunity to actually do something about this series of events you claim we are having.

Thanks nofreewind, looks like I killed off the topic, which to those that are still asking questions about what is really happening I apologise. I had to have a rant because I am fed up with the consistent way language has been used in this and previous fear mongering debates. I have an environmental science degree and was surprised in the way that I and others were treated when we questioned other factors that didn’t involve “human caused” effects.
It isn’t hard to see that the average joe is going to believe something like this as catastrophic which is a great shame as it is removing any choices they might have had.

http://nsidc.org/
You know, correct me if I am wrong, but in the succession of photos, the amount of ice never seems to get back to where it was. If you want REAL data sets, you know … from guys that are sponsored by the ones that sent us to the moon … go to the national snow and ice data center. Would you get a Ferrari serviced at the local wal-mart?
Look at the difference between the first and last picture of the B&W’s

Scientists, most important of all should be able to get it into their thick skulls, that MAN is a part of the NATURAL CYCLE of this planet. The problem IS NOT is it MAN MADE, or NATURAL CYCLE … we are a part of nature, morons.
If you suggest otherwise, you suggest we are either super natural or unnatural.
We are in-fact NATURAL aren’t we? Idiots. The problem is WHAT TO WE DO. Start thinking, and not like your grandfather.Reply: Close to being censored a bit. Please tone it down. ~ charles the moderator

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